photo of St John in Bedwardine, Worcester
OS: SO840544 show on a map

Worcester, St John in Bedwardine

St John in Bedwardine, the Parish Church of St Johns, a suburb of Worcester, is easy to find. It is situated on the South side of the Bromyard Road (A44) in the middle of St John's.

I rang in this tower on Saturday 9th October 2004 as part of a tour in 2004.

I am very familiar with the church as I lived in St. Johns for seven years as a teenager though I had never been in the bell tower. This is a big church and a spiral staircase leads up to the ringing area that is large, spacious and comfortably furnished. I started by ringing up #6 which was one of the original bells cast by T. Mears in 1816 and weighed "9-0-20" [1028lb or 466kg] followed by some call changes. The next bell I rang was #7, this was one of the newer bells, we rang some call changes and spent a long time trying to get Queens but it never sounded right. Perhaps the different speed of 8 bells had an effect, perhaps it was the end of a long days ringing. I ended up ringing down #4.

The Bells

Until 1930 the tower had only 6 bells when two more were added. The original set of 6 were cast by T. Mears in 1816 and are now bells #3-#8. The two new bells were cast by John Taylor in 1930 and were installed as #1 and #2.

Dove's Guide includes details of the bells at St John in Bedwardine with more information provided by the Worcestershire & Districts Change Ringing Association.

BellNoteDiameter Weight
1F 5-0-24
2E 5-2-26
3D 6-1-6
4C 6-3-16
5B 7-3-19
6F 9-0-20
7F 10-3-23
TenorF 15-1-16
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